Environment Committee on Jan. 28th, 2008

[Ian Shugart]

I don't know offhand. If the committee wishes, we can provide that.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

It would be helpful. Is there an estimate? You must have an idea what it cost to bring your own officials.

[Ian Shugart]

I'm sorry?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

You must have an idea of what it cost to bring your own officials to Bali, for example.

[Ian Shugart]

Well, I don't know the per-person cost. I know we work within Treasury Board guidelines, of course, to--

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think the committee would welcome that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

You could send that to the clerk and we could circulate it to all members.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

That would be very helpful.

So the next two years of negotiations, as you put it, Mr. Shugart, are going to roll out just as they were contemplated under the Kyoto Protocol. Is that right?

[Ian Shugart]

Yes. There is the ad hoc working group for the Kyoto country further commitments, and there is the convention dialogue, both processes of which were discussed and confirmed with end dates established.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Throughout our time there, until the last day, media reports indicated that in the holdout industrialized countries signatory to Kyoto--as you say, in the small group responsible for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions--Canada was the single most intransigent holdout in all of the discussions. We were pursuing—and at least the government should be given an A for consistency—the same aspirational approach at the international level and working, we understand, fairly feverishly inside to undermine a final statement that would actually have science-based targets.

Can you tell us what's happened with APEC? The Prime Minister was propped up in front of the White House some time ago saying that we were joining APEC. That was after his G-8 speech when he said pretty well that we were not going to abide by our targets under Kyoto. What has happened with APEC's aspirational targets? Did we actually take this aspirational approach in Bali? What came of it?

We understand that in the last 15 minutes of negotiations our minister caved, got a large amount of applause for caving, and we got a final statement. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Shugart, make it very brief, please, as Mr. McGuinty's time is up.

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chair, the objective of the government--and it was applied consistently in the negotiations--was not to go beyond the purpose of the Bali conference, which was to establish the negotiating process. The actual discussion of what a target would be was not in fact an item for decision at Bali. We were convinced that we needed to have a clear negotiating process established that would be guided by the science of the IPCC. That was not a change.

We also believed that in that negotiating process we needed to have the appropriate engagement of all major emitters. That was an issue that was consistently pursued in Bali.

I would say that the reality on the ground was that the principles, as I have mentioned them and as they were laid out by the minister in the national statement, were in fact the positions that we took in the negotiating statements and in the negotiating process throughout the meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Bigras.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I was present in Bali and was able to observe the work of the minister at that conference. The minister played hooky from several meetings.

My first question is simple. Can you confirm that during the last 48 hours of the conference in Bali, the minister left an important meeting of presidents who were seeking a consensus in the international community with regard to the Bali conference? Can you confirm that the minister left a meeting of presidents close to 48 hours before the end of the conference?

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chairman, I cannot confirm that. The member is referring to a report concerning such a meeting in the media. There was a fairly important meeting—I believe it was Thursday evening—of the friends of the chair group. It took place at the same time as another ministers' meeting and some representatives, that is the minister or myself, had to attend those two meetings.

In fact, the minister did not leave any critical meeting that was in search of consensus over the conference. Canada was represented at senior levels, at appropriate levels, in all of these meetings. In some cases--I would say in most of these meetings--some countries would have their minister there; others would have their alternate head of delegation there. It would not always be the same in each case, and it would not always be the same for a given country in each of those meetings.

As the conference went on, towards the end, in fact in most of the key meetings the minister and I and typically Mr. McGovern were there together. That is what happened, and that is what would normally happen in the conference.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

In reality, Canada contributed to weakening the Bali roadmap. Everyone agrees on that, including the scientists. Canada, which used to be an international leader in this area, even received, together with the United States, the year's Fossil of the Day Award, which is worth pointing out.

I would like to know what position Canada defended in Bali as regards including the two-degree limit in the Bali roadmap. Did it strongly support it? I'm not talking here about additional notes or footnotes, but about including it in the Bali roadmap itself.

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chairman, the issue of the two degrees was not expressly on the program. The targets, objectives and scientific facts highlighted by the group of international experts were of course a part of the discussions. Canada took part in these in a dynamic and consistent way and supported the position that the negotiation process on targets should be led by scientists. That was our delegation's position.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

But that is not the position you promoted in Bali. You did not say that the matter of the two degrees should be included in the roadmap and that you would defend this position on the international scene.

Was that the position you defended or did you not, rather, do everything to have the two-degree limit removed from the roadmap?

[Ian Shugart]

Did you want to comment on that?

[David McGovern, Assistant Deputy Minister, International Affairs Branch, Department of the Environment]

If I may.

It's important to remember what the objectives were for the meeting, which were set out in fact by the Indonesian president of the COP and by the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Mr. Yvo de Boer--a triple benchmark of success to launch the negotiations. It was to agree on the basic building blocks and it was to agree on an end date. It wasn't about negotiating the details of the process; it was to get the process in place. That was the successful outcome of the meeting in Bali.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Chairman, if small details don't have to be worked out, can the officials explain to us how it is that the minister said before the committee and in the House that he intended to bring the plan he had tabled along in his suitcase? If I'm not mistaken, it contains reduction objectives for 2020. These are intensity-based objectives, which we challenge, but they are nevertheless objectives for 2020.

When he arrived in Bali the minister opposed the idea of a second phase of obligatory cuts by 2020 and proposed only long-term objectives. Is there not a contradiction between what the minister said here and what he said in Bali?

[Ian Shugart]

What the minister said in the national statement was in fact that the current obligations of industrialized annex I countries should be expanded through deepened commitments by all industrial countries as well as through the participation of others. We did not put on the table what those commitments should be. That is the point of the exercise.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I understand what you are saying very well. I was there and I heard what the minister said.

In Canada, he proposed a plan consisting in reducing the intensity of emissions by 20% by 2020. Is that correct? How can he not make a medium-term commitment internationally? Why is he refusing to support countries who not only wish to see a commitment for 2050, but a medium-term commitment?

Does this not show clearly that Canada's purpose was to weaken the roadmap, to reject the Kyoto Protocol—which contains a short-term objective—to avoid a medium-term international commitment, and to let emissions increase until 2050? Doesn't this show bad faith on the part of the government, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Bigras, I think it's difficult for Mr. Shugart to answer what the minister said. Obviously, we need to ask the minister to justify what he said. You're a little off topic here by having him defend what the minister said.

Let Mr. Shugart answer, Mr. Bigras.

[Ian Shugart]

I would just state that the government has said that this process has to lead to a halving of global emissions by 2050 as a long-term goal, which should guide the whole negotiation. Then, as a mid-term goal, Canada has committed to a national policy, a national objective, of a 20% reduction in emissions—actual reduction in emissions—by 2020, comprising a number of efforts, including the regulatory package, efforts by provinces and so on, and the negotiating process will itself address what should be medium-term goals in a new protocol. We will see the result of the negotiations.

In its own regulatory plan, the government has indicated periodic stages of revision, examination, and review of targets. Over the next two years we and other negotiators, other countries, will need to come to grips with what those medium-term objectives should be. But the government's policy is that there should be medium-term commitments by all countries, in a binding mechanism, en route to a global target in 2050.